Research highlight: Navigating the confusing world of aged care
Do you understand the role of the Aged Care Safety and Quality Commission?
In 2018, only 16% of the 5,100 older people surveyed by National Seniors Australia understood the role of the Aged Care Safety and Quality Commission, in its previous iteration as the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency.
That year, the NSA research team stepped up its focus on aged care. We published two reports broaching the difficulties people have in navigating the system.
One was based on National Seniors Social Survey questions about numerous aspects of the aged care system.
It concluded that the majority of people “have very limited aged care literacy indicated by having never viewed the My Aged Care website or called the call centre, having never heard of Consumer Directed Care, not understanding how consumer financial contributions are assessed, having not heard of the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner or the Aged Care Quality Agency, and not knowing that there are Charters of Rights for aged care”.
The second report explored the experiences of older people from new and emerging culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities.
It was based on a Melbourne focus group and workshop with 20 community leaders.
The many issues they identified included language barriers, consent and privacy issues, taboos against placing family members in residential care, not knowing where to go for aged care information, and people having to return to their home countries to care for aged family members.
To find out more, read the full reports You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know: The current state of Australian aged care service literacy and Dealing with Diversity: Aged care services for new and emerging communities at nationalseniors.com.au/research/reports.
